Sherman saw the impossibility of holding the country and defending the railroads without constant losses. He telegraphed Grant, "With twenty-five thousand infantry and the bold cavalry he has, Hood can constantly break my road. I would infinitely prefer to make a wreck of the road and of the country from Chattanooga to Atlanta ... and with my effective army move through Georgia, smashing things to the sea." On the morning of Nov. 15, 1864, this great army of about 65,000 men began its march from Atlanta to the sea. The depot, round-house, and machine-shops of the Georgia railroad had been burned. The fire destroyed the heart of the city, but did not reach the mass of the dwelling-houses. The army carried sixty-five guns, or one to each thousand men. Each gun, caisson, and forge was drawn by four teams of horses. There were twenty-five hundred wagons, with six mules each, and six hundred ambulances with two horses each. Every soldier carried on his person forty rounds of ammunition, and in the wagons were enough cartridges to make up two hundred rounds to a man. The procession occupied five miles or more of road. Corps commanders alone were intrusted with the power of destroying mills, cotton-gins, etc. "Where the army is unmolested," said Sherman, "no destruction of such property should be permitted." The cavalry and artillery were allowed to take horses, mules, and wagons, especially from the rich, who were not usually as friendly as the poor. Soldiers were not to enter the dwellings of the inhabitants, but might gather vegetables and stock. Regular foraging parties might gather provisions at any distance from the road travelled. As the great company moved out of Atlanta, the black smoke of her buildings rising high in air, the men sang "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in his grave." "Never before or since," says Sherman, "have I heard the chorus of 'Glory, glory, hallelujah!' done with more spirit, or in better harmony of time and place." As Sherman moved past his men, some of them called out, "Uncle Billy,"--they usually called him this,--"I guess Grant is waiting for us at Richmond!" The first night they camped by the roadside near Lithonia. All night long groups of men were tearing up railroads and bending the heated rails around trees or telegraph poles. At the towns the white people came out to look upon the hated intruders, and the colored people were frantic with joy. Each day foraging parties, "Sherman's bummers" as they were called, usually about fifty men from a brigade, would go out to the plantations for food.